He smiles at us. “Jenna, baby, how

He smiles at us. “Jenna, baby, how you doin’?”
“Heya, Rocco,” she says. She jumps up on the counter and reaches across to give him a huge hug. “This is my friend Penny.”
Rocco lifts his head up once in greeting. “What brings you two in here?”
Jenna puts my bag up on the counter. She turns and looks around the store. “Just us in here right now, right?”
“Looks like it,” the guy on the stool says.
“Okay, good,” she says. “Here’s the deal. My friend here needs cash fast. Off the record.”
“Whoa, now,” Rocco says, holding both hands up defensively. “Off the record isn’t something I do for just anybody. You know that.”
“You owe me, Rocco,” she says. “I’m calling in a personal favor. Please, you gotta help her.”
“I don’t gotta do nothin’,” he says. He shrugs and eyes the bag. “But for you, I’ll take a look.”
I step closer. The diamond bracelet is still in the bag, and I don’t really want to just offer that up first thing, but I have no idea how to do this and I don’t want to say something wrong or piss these guys off.
I tap Jenna’s arm and she ignores me.
I tap it again.
She jerks her head toward me. “What?”
I lean toward her and whisper in her ear. “There’s a bracelet in there that I’m not sure I can sell. Can I just get that out first? Then he can look at the rest of it.”
“Yeah, sure.” She scoots the bag toward me and I unzip it. I have to dig through to find the bracelet. I close my fist around it, and stuff it in my pocket.
“Done,” I say with a smile. I’ve never felt more awkward in my life.
Jenna pushes the bag toward Rocco.
He opens it and starts laying items out one at a time. He makes notes on a pad of paper. It takes him about twenty minutes, but he finally circles something, then turns the paper around and scoots it across the counter toward us.
Jenna looks to me, an eyebrow raised in question.
The notepad has a bunch of figures written on it. The one that’s circled is $1600.
I close my eyes and let out a frustrated rush of air. “That’s for everything?” I ask.
“That’s for even exchange,” Rocco says. “Cash in hand.”
Fuck. I need a hell of a lot more than that.
“There’s got to be at least ten thousand dollars worth of stuff in there.”
“Look, this ain’t a department store,” he says with a laugh. “You want cash, this is the best I can do. Unless you wanna show me what’s in your pocket?”
I swallow. I know I should just take whatever he’s offering and walk out the door, but I can’t. It’s not enough.
I slowly pull the bracelet out of my pocket and lay it across the counter.
Rocco whistles and reaches under the counter for a small black box that has what looks like a metal pen top on one end. He switches it on and presses the metal probe onto the top of each diamond. He waits for a beeping sound, then moves to the next until he’s tested every single diamond on the bracelet.
“This is really something special,” he says. He looks up and lets his eyes drift from mine all the way down to my knees. “Where did you get this?”
“It’s mine,” I lie.
“Bullshit,” he says. “Where’d you really get it? I can’t buy stolen merchandise.”
My shoulders slump and I press my palms against the edge of the counter. “It’s my mother’s.”
“You stole it from her?”
“Not exactly,” I say. “She let me wear it a few nights ago. I got into an accident and it ended up in a plastic bag inside my purse. For all she knows, it was lost in the accident.”
“So she doesn’t know you still have it?”
I shake my head. Guilt churns my stomach, but what choice do I have? My mother has hundreds of these kinds of things. Bracelets, rings, earrings, watches. Does she really need another diamond bracelet more than this baby needs his surgery? No way.
It’s easy to rationalize in my head, but I know what I’m doing is still wrong.
“Two thousand dollars,” he says, running the bracelet through his hand.
“I need five thousand dollars,” I say bluntly. “For all of it.”
“Don’t dick around with her, Rocco,” Jenna says. “Give her the five grand. This stuff is worth a hell of a lot more than that and you know it.”
He lets a burst of air out through his lips, then raises his hands and backs away. “That’s a lot of money for something under-the-table like this. I’m the one taking all the risk.”
“Please,” I say, meeting his eyes straight on.
Rocco sighs and looks at the guy sitting on the chair. They exchange heavy looks until finally, the other guy shrugs.
Rocco holds his hand over the counter to me. I put my hand in his, and we shake on it.